Here’s a list of all the television shows I watched, from start to finish, in 2008. They all happen to be Saints games. One is missing, the one in Denver, which I didn’t see on TV, but instead paid $65 to have ruined for me.

They are in order from “most enjoyed” to “least.”

Week Four: Saints 31, 49ers 17.
In 8MM, Nicholas Gage says to Tony Soprano, “I will never get tired of hurting you, Eddie!” I feel the same way about the modern-day Saints beating the shit ouf of the modern-day 49ers. I hope the Niners are terrible forever.

Week Twelve: Saints 51, Packers 29
I have always resented the Packers and I don’t know why. This game, everything finally clicked for the Saints, and they won two in a row the only time this season. It was a MNF game, so everyone got to enjoy this absolute battle-raping. Tony Kornheiser brought up Brett Favre literally every 8 or 9 minutes.

Week Eight: Saints 37, Chargers 32
This was the last gasp of hope, for Saints fans this year. Christ we BEAT THE CHARGERS! Granted, it was in fucking London, which is hilarious, because 21 hours’ worth of travel is pretty much what the Saints WOULD need to exhaust the Chargers to where they could beat them, meaning that the two places in the world the Saints come out on top here would be England and half-way to the moon.

Week One: Saints 24, Bucs 20.
In an episode of the Kids in the Hall, Dave Foley (as a teenager) tells his parents that it’s not just a D he received in class… it’s a D with promise!Week one of the NFL season was like that.

Week Sixteen: Saints 42, Lions 7
Here’s the best part of this: both the GM and coach of the Lions got work within a few weeks of being fired (the GM, on tv, and the coach is the new defensive line coach for the Bears), while the rest of Detroit suffers through some of the worst unemployment in the country. What a giant fuck-you to everyone who is at least competent at what they do.

Week Eleven: Saints 30, Chiefs 20
I remember watching the tail-end of some Chief games before I saw this one. I am convinced that you could give Herm Edwards a time piece, and a caveman all the individual parts of one, and by the end of one regulation football game, the caveman would tell you the correct age of the universe, and Herm would have found a way to go back in time and destroy all human life on earth. (Is this OK as a clock management joke? I don’t want to repeat what anyone else has ever said of him.)

Week Fourteen: Saints 29, Falcons 25
YAAY WE BEAT A TEAM EVERYONE THOUGHT WOULD BE THE WORST IN FOOTBALL BEFORE THE SEASON – there was no pleasure here.

Week Six: Saints 34, Raiders 3
Everyone on the Saints was pretty much stat-whoring by the second drive. I think even Shockey caught a touchdown. (No he didn’t, he didn’t do that all year.) I’m not going to pretend that beating the crap out of a JV team is remotely entertaining.

Week Seventeen: Panthers 33, Saints 31
The Saints were already eliminated, but Brees was less than 20 yards away from breaking Marino’s record for passing yards in a single game. He still had over 400 yards passing on the day, which lead to Panthers cornerback Ken Lucas braying about how it was a matter of pride to not let Brees break the record. Throwing for 400 fucking yards in a game was apparently okay, though. The last time the Cardinals won a playoff game was in like 1998, so I am not kidding when I say that before today there were probably less than 53 people not collecting Social Security who would have to stand forward if asked, “Did the Cardinals ever beat you in a playoff game.” (The 98 Cowboys were the team here.) The fact that we can now add everyone on the fraud that was the 2008 Panthers to this exclusive company is fantastic, as far as I am concerned. I hate them, and I always will.

Week Thirteen: Bucs 23, Saints 20
I’m trying to remember what the hell happened this game, but I can’t. I assume I was drunk, and I assume that I could simply check my text messages to gsdgsd and get my memory refreshed. As I’d like all the memories of this season to be used for anything – everything – else, I’m not going to do that.

Week Ten: Falcons 34, Saints 20
“Don’t we need this game??” we all thought. Though we didn’t admit it, we knew that if we couldn’t beat the Falcons, we had no business thinking playoffs. Too much ground to cover, too little time.

Week Two: Redskins 29, Saints 24
I had actually called my brother up before the game was over. 90% of people on CBS Sportsline picked the Saints to win, and I was laughing, saying, “Usually when that happens, the team picked that heavily LOSES!” Then Santana Moss burned our secondary (people on the WhoDatZone have said it was Tracy Porter, who was our best CB, but I am suspect of this) and boom, the game was fucking over, Redskins win and what I was cackling about came true. The best part is – it’s not even the first time I had seen that “type” of game. Curtis Conway did the EXACT SAME FUCKING THING in the 4th quarter for the Bears back in 1999. Here’s the goddamn box score to show I am not lying. Ashley Ambrose held Conway in check all game, but got bitch cramps in the 4th, and Conway ran past ex-49er Tyrone Drakeford two times to win the game.

Week Seven: Panthers 30, Saints 7
I watched this at a sports book in Las Vegas. I lost twenty dollars on this game. Reggie Bush, who is probably second only to Roy Halladay, Rickey Jackson and Mark Recchi as my favorite entertainer of all time, and of the four, the only one where I have seen every game they’ve played, tore his meniscus, and was out for four weeks right before half-time in this one. I was also amazingly thirsty because it was the desert and I had been drinking the night before, and I wasn’t sure if I had to tip the cocktail waitress for water.

Week Five: Vikings 30, Saints 27
With Reggie Bush having microfracture surgery this off-season, it is likely that he will never be the same With that in mind… you know what, I already talked about this shit with Pinback, so I will just provide the chat log:

ICJ: That Minnesota game on MNF was in doubt the entire game, and Reggie was singularly the best player in football at that moment… And they still fucking lost. ICJ: Fuck this, FUCK this ICJ: I don’t even get the, “The team was playing like shit, but REGGIE BUSH pulled them through!” story. ICJ: I DON’T EVEN GET THAT

Pinback: That was the game when I learned to love, and yet be glad I don’t actually root for, the Saints.

ICJ: Yeah ICJ: … yeah

And the absolute worst thing I saw on television in 2008…

Week Fifteen: Bears 27, Saints 25
I will always hate the Chicago Bears. I will sum up why by simply stating that Lance Briggs shot his retarded mouth off to the local media before the game, saying that Drew Brees has no experience playing in cold weather.

Lance Briggs was born in California, and played college ball in Arizona. I am not joking when I say it is probable that he had never seen snow, literally never seen it, before he was drafted by the Chicago Bears, a team he loves so much that he publically threatened to hold out until he got the contract he was looking for.

Drew Brees played college ball in Purdue, which is in fucking Indiana, where it is currently 24 degrees. It takes a special brand of NFL player to be thought of as THE FUCKING DUMB ONE, but congrats, Briggs: you’re a winner here.

Fuck the Bears, fuck the NFL, fuck television.

(Also, I didn’t see the Super Bowl in its entirety, so that is why it is not on the list.)

(I caught parts of other playoff games and other NFL games in 2008, but I would wander back and forth, that’s why they are not on the list.)

(I saw most of Roy Halladay’s games in 2008, but through a shitty Flash player, not on a real tv, so that’s why they are not on the list.)